It comes in a ton of colors and even though my husband loathes it, I love it enough to make up for his disdain. (Sorry for the odd picture format, I couldn’t get it to crop evenly).

2.) This gorgeous slab I saw last week when doing some granite selection with a client.

Well, actually, it’s two slabs. See the reflection of the man for scale – they’re huge! I wish I remembered the name of the stone but all I can recall is the word “azure.”

3.) Easter Eggs/Family Crafts

We did some family egg dyeing last weekend, and I thought I was very clever when I taped off an egg and made an abstract landscape:

Then I walked around the table to check on my husband, and he TOTALLY showed me up with his PAINTING of our cat. Unbelievable. But he is talented! Do I even need to mention that instead of using a regular, pedestrian hard-boiled egg like my son and I did, he drilled a hole into his and literally blew out all of the insides?…of course I don’t.

Here are the finished eggs:

4.) Graphic patterns with bold colors.

This is a detail from a restaurant in Chattanooga, Tennessee called Milk and Honey (their website sports the same colors. Excellent gelato.) Right up my alley! This has been a long lasting combo, and I hope it sticks around.

5.) This video, which creatively applies the aesthetic of filmmaker Wes Anderson to the classic, Forest Gump.

The chair is circular and 32” in diameter. That may mean nothing to you, so let me explain: an average living room chair is about 36” or more in length and width and is square/rectangular. That means unless you have a lot of room in your floor plan, you’re squishing chairs into awkward corners, turning them diagonally, and running into issues when you want to switch up your furniture arrangement. The Otis chair, being small and round, is the perfect size to fit elegantly into most living rooms. And a huge added bonus is that you can almost always fit a pair into a bay window, like I did for this client (space is not finished…forgive the “naked” windows and floor):

2.) Otis is comfortable. Really.

My clients range in height from child-size, to about 6’4”. Their shapes vary similarly. So do the heights and shapes of their family members and guests. One thing we have to remember when buying furniture is that we want it to fit the people who live in the house AND we want it to comfortably fit family, guests, and any future mates/children/pets we may have. This chair fits the bill universally, in my experience. I have recommended it to more than a few wives who have very tall husbands, and each has been surprised to report back that they tested out the chair and it suits them very well, despite its small size. This is due in part to its round shape, which comfortably holds more “person” than a typical rectangular seat. As an added bonus, the chair swivels, so it doesn’t make you crane your neck to watch television or reposition if you need to reorient yourself…you just swivel to get where you need to be!

3.) Otis is (relatively) cheap.

Otis starts at just $699, which is a bargain in my world of custom furniture. If you choose higher-grade fabrics or leather options, you may pay as much as $1,249 per chair, but there is always the option to get one of the many beautiful fabrics at the base price.This means you can get two Otis chairs for the price of one chair at many other comparable retailers (and I mean “comparable” in terms of quality and level or customization).

Here are just a few of the fabrics you can use to upholster the chair, and none of these exceed $899 for a custom job:

One thing I didn’t mention is that its simple and sleek lines blend with most furniture styles you may already have. Mid-century modern? – Sure. Traditional? – We can make that work. Contemporary? – Not a problem.

So I think that settles it: this is my favorite chair right now. …and I don’t even own one!

Disclaimer: I rarely go on and on about my favorite products, but when I do, please know I’m doing so out of my own affinity for them and not because I’m compensated or asked to by the company. In fact, if we’re being honest here, Room & Board doesn’t even offer a trade discount…so you know I must really love them!

I dashed into Target last week to grab my son a towel for swim class, and got distracted by some flashy and CHEAP home goods. If you are familiar with the Columbia Heights Target, and if you are as attracted to graphic prints and novelty coffee cups as much I am, you’ll know that it’s a true test of wills to walk off that second floor elevator, breeze past the kid’s PJs as you make your way to the baby/toddler section, and be confronted with things like this:

…for JUST $19.99!

But I didn’t buy it. I can’t buy everything I like. Did I ever tell you how much my husband disdains unnecessary decoration? He would be happy with a bed, a single sofa, a concrete slab for a dining bench and a few well-placed candles for reading at night. He and Adolf Loos would have gotten along well (that’s for all my fellow architectural historian nerds).

I browsed for a few minutes, and here are some particularly neat finds I spotted. Thought I can’t say I advocate for a house full of Target, I am a huge advocate of mixing and matching across styles, materials, and budgets. You may even remember an edgy desk I posted about the other week…also from Target.

Here are some fantastic low-end contributions that you can easily make to your decor without feeling guilty. Have fun!

This morning I stopped by a client’s house in Columbia Heights to take a look at a design dilemma on their front porch. While there, I snapped a photo of their living room, which was recently painted according to the recommendations I made during a color consultation. I LOVE the blue-green with the original red-brown woodwork!

Since I’m a strong believer in not “prescribing” colors based on what they look like in other people’s homes or magazines (and because I tweaked this one in Photoshop a bit so that it more closely resembles the actual color and not what I photographed on my phone) I am not going to disclose the color name other than to say that it’s Benjamin Moore and it’s perfect. Look at the color combination rather than the photo quality or styling, please…it’s the definition of “complementary” for all my color-theory people.

From there I went on to another client’s house to receive a delivery, specifically, a table that is just the right balance of traditional and contemporary…and just the right amount of weird. I love it. Thanks Daren at And Beige!

When I was at this house the delivery guys couldn’t get enough of the ceiling in the front room. So I guess I’ll give you a sneak peek:

I really hope to have this project photographed soon when it’s complete so that I can show it off. It deserves some serious showing off.

Now the rest of my day is reserved for preparing for a class I’m teaching that begins next week. I haven’t been in the classroom since May and I can’t wait to get back!Have a great rest of the day!

Pink and green is a super classic combination (I could tell you about it via the tile floor in my childhood home…but I’ll save that for when I find photographs one of these days) but it’s often depicted as a extremely pop-ish or overly sweet. Not that there’s anything wrong with that approach, which is beloved by teenagers all over the world, but I want to point out that it can definitely be done in a way that is both a little more refined, a lot more subtle, and quite a bit less girly.

Here are five pink and green items that caught my eye because they take a typical combo and update it a bit. I especially love the globe! Enjoy the round-up!